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The Blog
Resources for founders raising capital
Clear, practical insights on pitch decks, fundraising strategy, financial models, and what investors actually care about, written from the front lines.
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Venture Debt Explained: What It Costs Founders and When It Makes Sense
US venture debt volume hit a new record in 2025, surpassing 2024’s $61.1 billion high, according to PitchBook. Deal count fell 19% at the same time. Fewer deals, much larger checks. AI infrastructure companies are pulling billion-dollar facilities. The average deal size has more than doubled since 2020. That headline number does not tell the story most founders need to hear. Venture debt is not just a late-stage instrument for AI unicorns. It is available to post-seed and Ser
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 14
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Venture Debt Explained: What It Costs Founders and When It Makes Sense
US venture debt volume hit a new record in 2025, surpassing 2024’s $61.1 billion high, according to PitchBook. Deal count fell 19% at the same time. Fewer deals, much larger checks. AI infrastructure companies are pulling billion-dollar facilities. The average deal size has more than doubled since 2020. That headline number does not tell the story most founders need to hear. Venture debt is not just a late-stage instrument for AI unicorns. It is available to post-seed and Ser
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 14
SAFE Note vs. Convertible Note: What They Are, How They Differ, and Which to Use
In Q1 2026, convertible notes hit a record low of just 7% of US pre-seed rounds, according to Carta’s State of Pre-Seed Q1 2026. SAFEs took the other 93%. That is not a close debate. For most US founders raising before a priced round, the instrument question has largely been settled by the market. But understanding why SAFEs won - and the specific situations where a convertible note still makes sense - is what separates a founder who signs the right instrument from one who si
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 9
Cap Table Explained: What It Is, How to Read It, and What Investors Look For
By the time a founding team raises a seed round, they retain a median of 56% of their fully diluted equity. By the time they close a Series A, that figure drops to 36%, according to Carta’s Founder Ownership Report 2026. That is 14 percentage points of founder ownership lost across two rounds. And most founders cannot tell you, round by round, exactly where it went. The cap table is the document that makes that math visible. Every share issued, every option granted, every inv
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 5
Startup Valuation: How Investors Set the Number - and How to Justify Yours
In Q1 2026, an AI foundational model startup raised its Series A at a median valuation of $300 million. A non-AI startup at the exact same stage raised at $55 million, according to Carta’s latest State of Private Markets report. Same round. Same paperwork. A more than five-times gap in startup valuation. That gap is the clearest proof of something we tell every founder who walks into RunwayTeam: valuation isn’t calculated. It’s negotiated. And if you don’t understand how to
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 1
Series D Funding: What $50M+ Rounds Actually Require
You've raised Series A. Scaled through B. Survived C. Now the conversation is turning to Series D - and the first thing most founders discover is that everything they've learned about fundraising needs recalibrating. The investor types are different. The due diligence is deeper. The narrative your deck needs to tell has nothing to do with potential and everything to do with proof. This guide covers what Series D funding is, what investors scrutinize at this stage, and how to
Giorgi Meskhi
Jul 28
Series C Pitch Deck: The Rebuild Most Founders Skip
You are in the top 1% of founders who have ever started a company. Only 1% of startups globally reach Series C. You have proven growth, built a team, and generated real revenue. The deck that got you here is not the deck that will close this round. At Series C, the investor base changes. The evaluation criteria shift. PE firms, hedge funds, and crossover funds often join the cap table alongside your traditional VCs - and they apply a fundamentally different analytical lens. T
Giorgi Meskhi
Jul 21
Why Most Series B Pitch Decks Still Read Like a Series A (And How to Fix That)
Seed investors buy a hypothesis. Series A investors buy a machine. Series B investors buy a market position. Most founders nail the first two transitions. The third one is where rounds quietly die. The mistake is rarely due to bad metrics. It is a deck that still tells a growth story when the investor across the table wants a dominance story. Growth is expected at Series B - it is the floor, not the ceiling. What separates funded decks from rejected ones at this stage is evid
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 30
Series A Pitch Deck: Structure, Metrics, and Examples (2026)
A seed deck asks investors to believe in a hypothesis. A Series A deck asks them to believe in a machine - a business that already works, already retains, and is ready to scale with capital. Those are two different arguments, and they require two different documents. Series A investors read decks differently from seed investors. They are not evaluating potential. They are evaluating proof: proof that the sales motion is repeatable, that customers stay and expand, and that the
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 22
How to Raise Seed Funding: The Deck, Model, and Mistakes That Decide Rounds
Seed investors approach a pitch differently from pre-seed angels and Series A funds. They are not backing a proven growth engine. They are making a specific bet on a specific team, a specific market, and a specific stage of evidence - and they are looking for a deck and financial model that makes that bet legible. If the materials do not address those dimensions precisely, the conversation ends before the business gets a fair hearing. This guide explains how to raise seed fun
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 16
What Is Pre-Seed Funding - and Are You Ready to Raise?
You have an idea. Maybe a rough prototype. You've been talking to potential users, and the problem you're solving is real. But you have no revenue, no product in the market, and possibly no co-founder yet. You keep hearing about pre-seed funding, but you're not sure whether you qualify, what investors actually want to see, or how the whole process works. This guide answers all of that. We'll cover what pre-seed funding is, how it differs from other early-stage rounds, what in
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 9
How to Build a Gaming Pitch Deck That Actually Raises Capital
If you are a game developer looking to pitch a publisher - Steam, Xbox Game Studios, Devolver Digital, or a similar partner - this guide is not for you. The developer-to-publisher pitch is a different exercise with different slides, different priorities, and different logic. This guide is for gaming startup founders raising capital from venture capital firms and angel investors. That distinction matters because the two audiences want completely different things. A publisher w
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 2
B2B SaaS Pitch Deck: How to Build One in 2026
B2B SaaS investors read decks differently from general startup investors. They are not just evaluating market size and growth potential. They are looking for ICP precision, a GTM motion aligned with the ACV, and a metrics layer that demonstrates the business compounds. If the deck does not clearly address those dimensions, the meeting ends before the product gets a fair hearing. This guide explains how to build a B2B SaaS pitch deck that holds up in real investor conversation
Giorgi Meskhi
May 27
Crypto Pitch Deck: How to Raise Capital for a Web3 Startup (2026 Guide)
Most crypto founders are not rejected because the technology is weak. They are rejected because the deck fails to make a token-based business legible to the people writing the cheques. Crypto VCs and Web3 angels read decks differently from standard startup investors. They are not just evaluating market size and growth potential. They are underwriting token design, regulatory exposure, and on-chain evidence. If the deck does not clearly address those dimensions, the meeting en
Giorgi Meskhi
May 20
Mobile App Pitch Deck: The 12 Slides Investors Expect (2026 Guide)
Investors see dozens of app pitches every quarter. The ones that move forward share a specific quality: clarity. Clarity on the problem, the product, the numbers, and the people. Not beautiful slides. Not a feature list. Clarity. This guide covers what goes into a mobile app pitch deck that actually works in investor conversations, not just one that looks good on screen. It covers the right slide structure, what investors read on each slide, the mistakes that quietly kill app
Giorgi Meskhi
May 13
EdTech Pitch Deck: A Slide-by-Slide Guide for Education Startups
EdTech is not a forgiving vertical for fundraising right now. After the 2021 boom, investor appetite contracted sharply. Platforms that scaled fast on pandemic tailwinds lost traction when schools returned to normal budgets. By 2025, funding recovered - but the bar rose permanently. Capital is concentrating in a smaller number of deals. Average funding amounts climbed to $7.8M, meaning investors are choosier, not more generous. Most EdTech founders build pitch decks that
Giorgi Meskhi
May 7
Fintech Pitch Deck: Where Most Founders Fall Short
Most fintech founders walk into a raise with a deck built for the wrong audience. It looks like a startup pitch deck, because that is what the templates produce. But fintech investors are not generalist VCs. They come from banking, payments, and credit. They know what a loss ratio is. They know what licensing costs. They know the difference between GTV and revenue. A deck that ignores those distinctions does not get a polite pass. It gets filtered out in the first review. Thi
Giorgi Meskhi
Apr 30
The SaaS Pitch Deck Guide for Founders Who Are Done Guessing
Most SaaS founders walk into a fundraise with the wrong deck. Not a bad deck. A generic one. The kind built from a Y Combinator template, padded with a TAM number from a Gartner blog, and decorated with logos that do not yet pay you. That deck closes at a marketplace startup. It will not close at a SaaS round in 2026. SaaS investors read decks differently. They look for things a generic template cannot show: monthly retention, NRR, payback period, and whether your unit econom
Giorgi Meskhi
Apr 29
Stop Guessing Your TAM: A Founder’s Guide to the Market Size Slide
Nine out of ten market-size slides are dismissed in the first ten seconds. Not because the market is too small. Because the numbers are not believable. Investors see hundreds of decks. They know when a founder has Googled a Statista report, multiplied by a percentage, and called it their TAM. That approach does not build conviction. It destroys it. IN THIS GUIDE • What a market size slide is and why investors care • Why most market size slides get dismissed • TAM,
Giorgi Meskhi
Apr 22
How to Build a Financial Slide for Your Pitch Deck (Founder Guide)
The pitch deck financial slide is not about accounting precision. It is about credibility. Investors understand that early-stage projections are imperfect. What they evaluate instead is: Does the growth logic make sense? Are margins realistic? Is burn aligned with go-to-market? Is capital being deployed efficiently? A strong financial slide in a pitch deck builds confidence in the business. A weak one raises doubts about judgment. This guide breaks down what belongs on the sl
Giorgi Meskhi
Apr 15
Use of Funds Slide: The 5 Elements Investors Want to See
56% of pitch decks have a weak or missing use-of-funds slide. In our experience reviewing 600+ decks, this is one of the clearest signals investors use to judge founders. Not because of the numbers themselves, but because of what those numbers reveal. A use of funds slide shows how you think about capital. It answers questions investors rarely ask directly: Do you understand what actually drives growth? Are you realistic about cost and timing? Do you know what this round need
Giorgi Meskhi
Apr 8
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